After Brexit vote, wave of racist and xenophobic threats reported across U.K.

In the wake of Britain’s historic Brexit vote to leave the European Union last week, U.K. police have been receiving increased reports of xenophobic and racist threats made against immigrants across the country — particularly Polish people, local officials said.

In Hammersmith, West London, the entrance building that houses the Polish Social and Cultural Association was defaced by graffiti that read, “Go home.” According to the Evening Standard, police are investigating it as a “racially motivated” crime.

In Huntingdon, a town in Cambridgeshire, laminated cards carrying the message “Leave the EU/No more Polish Vermin” — written in both English and Polish — were reportedly left in the mailboxes of Polish families.

According to the paper, a Polish primary-school student found several of the same signs outside his school in Cambridgeshire on Friday morning. Police there were said to be investigating the threatening signs as a possible hate crime.

Greg Hands, a Conservative Member of Parliament, condemned the anti-Polish threats.

Twitter users spent part of the weekend documenting examples of such threats using the hashtag #PostRefRacism. And Poles weren’t the only immigrants on the receiving end.

The referendum was widely seen as a rejection by Britons of the EU’s acceptance of immigrants from war-torn regions, including Syria and North Africa. And despite assurances by those who campaigned in favor of Brexit that the vote would not affect EU citizens who already reside legally in the U.K., the vote appears to have emboldened nationalists.

“I’ve spent most of the weekend talking to organizations, individuals and activists who work in the area of race hate crime, who monitor hate crime, and they have shown some really disturbing early results from people being stopped in the street and saying, ‘Look, we voted ‘leave.’ It’s time for you to leave,’” Sayeeda Warsi, former Conservative Party chair, told Sky News. “And they are saying this to individuals and families who have been here for three, four, five generations. The atmosphere on the street is not good.”

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